Dedicated to getting to the truth of things. A Christian since 1984. (Just a Christian, without pigeon-holing into a denomination.) I like people to be free to ask their questions about Christianity and the church. I like to approach faith questions with my brain switched on. A qualified classicist and historian.
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And I don't look like James Garner. Enough about me already.

Sunday, 5 February 2017

What did Tacitus really say about Christ and Christians?

Tacitus was a distinguished
writer, born in the 50s of the first century AD, perhaps in northern Italy. Born
about two decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, he is valuable to us not as
an eyewitness of Jesus, but as a historian far closer to the time and place of Jesus
than we are. And we are talking about him here because in one of the books of
history he wrote, he mentions Christ. He is what historians call a 'secondary source' on the subject of Jesus, and a useful one. Tacitus also provides our first explicit historical evidence of an event of which he was a contemporary - the persecutions of Christians under Emperor Nero in his own native country. This is all in his Annals 15:44, written in Latin, published late in
his life, around 116AD. I had to study this passage as part of my Latin degree (at a secular university, I would add), not much to my enjoyment as Tacitus is not an easy read in the original Latin. I will give him only in English translation here, a standard academic translation, you may be pleased to know.

Tacitus was well placed to get information for a few reasons: he had close
ties to the Roman government; early in the second century, he was also an
official of the Roman government in Asia. Tacitus had a special interest too: he wrote a long
history of the Roman war with the Jews in Israel. This means Tacitus had spent
time studying Roman records about what had happened in Palestine (as the Romans came to call the place) and talking to
people who knew about it. He had access to official documents in Rome. He was a servant of the power of which the Christians were victims.

What was his attitude to Jews and Christians? Disdainful. In particular,
we will see him calling the Jesus movement a nasty ‘superstitio’, with derogatory
comments about Christians dripping from his pen. CONTENT

Before tackling
arguments about this, let’s see what the text of the passage by this Roman
historian actually says. Tacitus paints a vivid picture, set in Rome in the 60s
of the first century. This was after the great fire of Rome in the days of the
Roman Emperor Nero. History has not been kind to Nero’s reputation. Tacitus tells
us some of his problems. Here’s the situation:

First, your
city burns down. What do you do? You make sure it never happens again. But how?
You rebuild better than before and, for good measure, you appeal to your gods.
At least, that’s how it was for the Romans in the first century.

Tacitus
describes how Rome was rebuilt after the great fire with new better fire
precautions. Normal earthly precautions. But in ancient Rome’s
worldview, you also needed divine help to keep a city safe. So Tacitus moves on
from describing the sensible fire precautions like this:

“Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of
propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction
of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons,
first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was
procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly
vigils celebrated by married women.”

That is all
very exotic sounding. All this superstitious ritual activity was done in the
hope that it would safeguard the city from future threat of fire. It was like a
deal with the Roman gods. It was expected that the Emperor should be seen to be
playing his part in keeping their gods happy so there would be no more such
disasters. Nero would want to be seen to be securing the future safety of the
city of Rome, by both earthly and divine means. He had done his bit. Now the
city was safe again. But for Nero, there was another problem that would not go
away, one thing that all the superstitious ritual was no use for. Tacitus
continues by switching from what the ritual was good for, to what it was not
good for:

“But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor,
and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the
conflagration was the result of an order.”

Tacitus
means an order given by Emperor Nero to burn down his city. It had all been his
fault, sinister rumours were saying, this fiery destruction. A safe city is not
enough for Nero; he needs his reputation saved too. This needed a different
solution. Placating the gods would do for stopping fires. But what do you do
about a reputation in tatters? For this he has the time-honoured solution
beloved of politicians. Find a scapegoat. Find someone else to blame, someone
the populace hate, someone who would be capable of terrible things in the
public’s imagination. Nero’s scapegoat was… you guessed it… the Christians in
Rome. Tacitus continues – and here begin the references we are so interested
in:

“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the
guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their
abominations, called Chrestians by the populace.”

Tacitus’
point is that it is precisely because rumours of Nero’s guilt have stuck to him
that he diverted attention onto a scapegoat. So now Tacitus has mentioned
Chrestians. (Footnote 2 below deals with them being named as such.) Tacitus indicates that Nero knew of the Christians as a distinct group, and therefore Tacitus reports of them as such. He doesn't here try to explain any distinction between Christians and other Jews. He just refers to Christians because Nero fastened on them. In short, Nero knew of them as a distinct group, and as a consequence Tacitus did too. The poplace's view of Christians is ill-informed. Their perception of 'abominations', coupled with Tacitus' perjorative words 'hideous and shameful' is in sharp contrast to the words of a Roman official who actually interrogated Christians and reported that Christians would "bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so." It seems that the real life of a Christian was unknown to Tacitus and the populace. Next Tacitus gives his readers a few historical footnotes, so to
speak. He makes some clear statements about the man after whom the Christians
were named:

“Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the
extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our
procurators, Pontius Pilatus,

Tacitus is very restrained in what he says here. He does not stray beyond saying what the Romans did to Christ, and where and when. That he suffered the 'penalty' indicates that his execution was for some perceived offence. That's all that is said here. (This is quite unlike, say, Tacitus' writing on the origins of the Jews which is not at all restrained and includes all manner of tosh. On Christ, Tacitus limits himself to saying what the Romans did.) Note that
Tacitus states that Christ was killed under the Roman official Pilate, a simple factual past event. (I needed
to point out the obvious there, if only because some mythicist hyper-sceptics
today claim that Tacitus mentions the event of Christ's death only as a 'Christian belief'. Tacitus says nothing of the kind. He states that this death happened only as a simple fact.) Broken down, the passage is interesting for being unlike ancient Christian formulations. It mentions 'Christ', but unlike Christian creeds omits 'Jesus'. Also entirely absent is the typical Christian formulation that Jesus died, was buried and was raised. Also unlike Christian creeds, Tacitus includes the detail that the death was 'during the reign of Tiberius'. This is not found in any standard Christian formulation to my knowledge. Only one biblical gospel even names Emperor Tiberius (the Gospel of Luke) and it does so only in a different context. Unlike Tacitus, Christian creeds also don't refer to Pilate's job title (here it is 'procurator') but rather Christians usually name him as Pontius Pilate. So if Tacitus was relying on a source, it was a source that uses non-Christian formulations. The dissimialrity with Christian-style formulations about the death of Christ, as found in ancient Christian texts, suggests that what we read in Tacitus is uniquely Roman. It is not a version of a Christian belief statement.Tacitus only mentions the word 'Christ' to give an explanation for the origin of the word 'Chrestians' and thus to give a context to the origins of the movement. Where did Tacitus get the word 'Christ' from? Perhaps it was just general knowledge that Christians were so called because they spoke of Christ (Acts 11:23-36). The simple question, "Why are they called Christians?" would have delivered this answer to him. So Tacitus was interested in the origins of the word 'Chrestians', although seemingly not in the realities of Christian lives.

It's worth mentioning, that the one word 'Christus' does not tell us that the source of the rest of the passage is a Christian source, as that would fail to explain why the formulation of the rest of the passage on the death of Christ is dissimilar to Christian texts and seems uniquely Roman, and it would also fail to explain why Tacitus is as ignorant as the populace of what Christians actually do. Tacitus shows no interest, by the by, in the meaning of the word 'Christus'. (If he had any such interest, he would indicate it by saying something like, 'Christus means...' He does not do so.Lastly, it may be worth noting that what Tacitus says about Christ points to Christ being a human man but does not point to Jesus being divine, about which Tacitus shows no awareness. Again, this suggests that Tacitus had no knowledge of what any Christians celebrated in their gatherings, in sharp contrast to his friend Pliny who knew rather more.

Now Tacitus talks about the
Christians again:

and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the
moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but
even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the
world find their centre and become popular.”

Tacitus
clearly regards Christians as toxic. He couldn’t write a nastier poison pen
letter if he tried. Here he has given us useful information: that the Christian
movement started in Judea, was checked for a moment after Christ died, but then
got going again in Judea. And then spread to Rome where the Christians were
disliked. The Latin word 'superstitio' is a generic word, and means that the Christians didn't conform to what Romans would consider proper religion. It doesn't mean 'superstition' in the way that we might use it - the Romans using it were not implying particular content such as 'throwing salt over your shoulder' - they were implying a lack of Roman content. Here this generic word basically means that the Christians' religious attitude lacked approved Roman behaviour. Although Tacitus evidences no particular knowledge, this word signals aberrations such as, perhaps, not frequenting Roman temples, not making animal sacrifices, not burning incense to honour the emperor, etc. That is what would be 'mischievous' about it.Tacitus may have been disinterested in the content of Christian practices. Rome's interest in Christians in the second century was their refusal to conform. Rome's interest was not in the life of Christ. The refusal to take part in rituals of emperor worship was enough for Christianity to be branded a 'superstitio'. We can't assume that Tacitus cared to look any further into the things that Christians do - he was not a heresiologist.Tacitus tells us how Nero’s scapegoat tactic was implemented:

“Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded
guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not
so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.”

It is unclear what they may have admitted guilt to. Tacitus
says it was guilt ‘not so much
of the crime of firing the city’. Basically, “hatred of mankind” was attributed to Christians –
and those admitting to being Christians paid the price for it. ‘Hatred of
mankind’ needs explanation. It is well known to historians that early Christians
were regarded in a bad light because they avoided pagan religious activities
around which so much of Rome’s business and social life was based. This was
regarded as anti-social, separatism, a ‘hatred of mankind’. In summary, Christians
are painted in a very bad light here. No-one has a good word for them it seems.
It may not seem to us much to be arrested for, but this was a time of
injustice. Tacitus says there was a multitude of Christians in Rome: he is our only witness to it being so many; while there are no witnesses who say their number was small. We do at least have corroboration that there was a church in Rome, and we know this first-hand from Paul who, in the 50s of the first century, had already known of the existence of a church there for some years (Romans
15:23 etc.). Tacitus next describes the grim fate of Nero’s scapegoats:

“Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered
with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed
to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly
illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the
spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the
people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car.”

So Tacitus
tells us how gruesome it got. And Nero made sure everyone noticed that
punishment was being carried out, even seen from his own garden.He wanted it to seem as if everyone could now
trust that the real culprits for the fire must be these Christians, so
deserving of their punishment.

This is an
appropriate place for us to answer a suggestion by mythicist hyper-sceptics who
claim that this passage was not written by Tacitus but by later Christian
editors. Some of them claim that this is an example of Christian martyrdom literature.
That is nonsense. If it were a text written by Christians, it would
have Christian touches such as the martyrs seeing heaven open, or speaking to a
heavenly Jesus, and with such Christ-like virtue whilst dying that it causes onlookers to marvel at the specialness of their faith. (These stories generally show literary borrowing from the likes of the account of the martyrdom of Stephen in the Book of Acts.) That sort of pious detail. But there is nothing of the kind in
this passage, which rules out that mythicist suggestion. We know what early
Christian martyrology texts look like, and Tacitus lacks their key features. So
Annals 15:44 was not written by any Christian.

Tacitus
tells us what happens so often when the state attacks the marginalised in
society. It backfires. It didn’t quite have the effect Nero wanted. Tacitus
explains how the Christians were then regarded with pity, and Nero with more
disapproval:

“Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary
punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed,
for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being
destroyed.”

Tacitus reveals that as much as Nero tried to stage-manage
events, his reputation just
suffered more. And so that, then, is Tacitus’ account of the persecution of
Christians in Rome.

Tacitus has told us quite
a bit there: that the movement started in Judea before Christ's death, and it
arose again after his death, a death under Pilate during Tiberius' reign; it
also says that the movement spread to Rome.It is worth reiterating that Tacitus is restrained in his treatment of Christians inasmuch as he tells no fanciful stories of their exploits. Unlike the tosh he wrote about the origins of the Jews, Tacitus indicates only that their movement came from Judea, revived despite the death of Christ, and he tells that they admitted guilt to something in Rome. That's all. Everything else Tacitus says about them is what the Romans did to them, and what a nasty impression the Romans had of them. That's all. As with what Tacitus said of Christ, he is restrained. He makes no great claims of anything about the origins or actions of the Christians. Their is no fanciful elaboration, nor any obvious knowledge of Christian practices. He seems uninterested in any actual stories about them except what relates to Nero and Rome. There’s nothing favourable about Tacitus’ poisonous treatment of Christians. To recap part of the argument against interpolation, Tacitus’ words are obviously not written by Christians, poisonous hostile words calling Christians and their religion a ‘disease’, a ‘pernicious superstition’, a people ‘loathed for their vices’ who have ‘hatred for the human race’. And Tacitus implictly links all this back to their following Christ, but the real force behind his words is surely that the Christians were not bowing to the emperor, and so these Christians have to be described in very sinister terms. This is just not the sort of publicity which Christians want Christ’s name to be associated with. Tacitus wrote all these words, none of it was written by Christians. Naysayers who say otherwise are just being tendentious.SOURCES

Now an important question is about the source of Tacitus’ information about Christ and Christians. The first thing to say is that, whatever sources he was gleaning from, he was satisfied with the validity of the report. (Whereas, wherever he does doubt the validity of some report, it's not unusual for him to indicate that one way or another.)In examining this, I have to keep in mind what Tacitus actually wrote. In regard to Christ, Tacitus says only what the Romans did to him; and although Tacitus knows him as Christ which is what Christians called him, this tells us nothing about the source of the rest of what Tacitus tells us about Christ, since this is dissimilar to ancient Christian formulations. In regard to Christians, Tacitus echoes popular hysteria about Christians rather than convey any analysis or real details about what Christians actually do.I will briefly touch on the weaknesses of three common suggestions for who might be the source of the information on Christ especially (and Christians too): Josephus, Pliny and Christians. ChristiansWe need to be clear which information we mean. As to Christ, it consists only of what Romans did to him: the who, where, when, what. As to Christians, it consists only of the vague reference which we can infer is to fantasies entertained by the Roman populace about Christian practices being in bad taste, and the Christians' alienation from the populace. We can surmise from this that Tacitus and his sources in the general populace, who thought in this perjorative way, had not really got to know any actual Christians personally. This is worth amplifying. Just as Tacitus does not seem to have consulted any Jews about the origins of the Jewish people (which is obvious in that he recycled tosh about the Jews), so also he does not seem to have had personal contact with Christians (which is obvious in that he has no apparent knowledge of what Christians actually do, unlike his friend Pliny). Tacitus therefore had only non-Christian sources, which could say only what the Romans did to Christ and what their own perjorative perception of Christians as an alienated group was. It is very different from the more measured and expansive account, containing actual details, given by someone who actually did meet Christians - Pliny. (See Footnote 3 below.) It is worth noting that despite this rather obvious obstacle, some sceptics persist with their belief that Tacitus' information source about Christ was Christians, which assumption depends in turn on the inbuilt assumption that Christians were talking about Christ being executed under Pilate in the reign of Tiberius and on the further assumption that there was an unknown chain of transmission to get news of that to Tacitus, and it depends on the further inbuilt assumption that Tacitus never bothered to check that from his own sources: a string of assumptions, which ignores the problem that Tacitus seems to have had no knowledge of what Christians actually do, which somewhat undermines the theory.Some mythicists accept, as you will have gathered, that Tacitus
was the writer (not an interpolator). They usually persist with the claim that Tacitus could only have got this
information from Christians as a Christian 'belief'. Tacitus says nothing of the
kind. He merely states what the Romans did to Christ as fact, without qualifying it as a 'belief'. And
there is another particular problem for the mythicist suggestion: why on earth would
Tacitus trust people he despised as an information source for histories that he
was devoted to writing well, and why then state it all as fact as he does without any disclaimers? And if he had a Christian source, why does he not report anything more than what Romans did to Christ? Anyway,
he wouldn’t just regard Christians - as people he despised - as a good touchstone for information
and then just write it without any disclaimer. There is no evidence that he had listened to any Christians or read any gospels or any other Christian literature. He could find things out for
himself. He preferred Roman sources. PlinySome suggest that Tacitus got his information indirectly from Christians via his friend and fellow Roman official Pliny. But there are problems with such a suggestion. The first is that there is no indication that they compared notes on this, only that they wrote about different groups of Christians. Their separate writings reveal two completely separate sets of data. Tacitus speaks of the movement's origins and recent events in Rome, on which Pliny says nothing. Pliny basically details the day to day ritual practices of Christians (in Asia Minor), on which Tacitus says nothing. There is no overlap of data. Pliny knows what Christians actually do, but Tacitus seems ill-informed about that by comparison, merely echoing the popular hysteria about the Christians being up to something awful. This sharply contrasts with Pliny's dispassionately conveyed informed and detailed knowledge. In any case, it is on the more unlikely side that they compared notes on this particular issue as it forms a very small part of their writings indeed, which fits with the fact that their writings betray no sharing of information on this. (The most you could say was comparable would be their derogatory comments about Christians holding to a bad superstition, but Tacitus and Pliny would say that, as they were currying favour with an imperial audience, and of course describing any religion that refuses to bow to the emperor as a bad superstition was an appropriate thing for them to say. It no more shows writers pinching off each other than would be the case if two civil servants described ISIS as religious extremists.) For the record, Pliny's information is in Footnote 3 below. JosephusJosephus has also been suggested as a source, but we can more or less rule out that Tacitus used Josephus as a source given that Tacitus had nothing but tosh to say about the origins of the Jews, a subject on which Josephus could have enlightened him. Official sources

Once we rule out those three suggestions as weak, there are less complicated
explanations available for Tacitus’ knowledge, as said above (uncomplicated is better usually).

He spent time out east,
so was probably informed of this new Jewish group there, and he would have had
some access to the Roman Empire’s records because of his official position.

For fact-checking, he undoubtedly had the Acta Diurna (for events in and around Rome) and Acta Senatus (records of the Roman Senate) to refer to (if only we had them too!), but possibly not access to the jealously guarded Imperial library. If the Acta Diurna included notices of events in the wider empire, then a library copy of the Acts Diurna could have been Tacitus' source for his comments on what the Romans did to Jesus, but it is difficult to say that these would have included the detail that some people called him the Christ, which is one thing that probably needed an additional source. Anyway, Rome's Acta Diurna have not survived and so there would be no way to evidence any of this.

He also consulted other authors (for example on the fire of Rome, see Annals 15.38). He was a keen researcher. He wrote lengthy histories about the Jewish War which means he had significant sources about what went on in first century Judea.

If he had had access to records relating to the trial of Paul before Nero's court (which was due to happen about 62AD, just a couple of years before Nero's fire and persecution of Christians) it would have been useful, but that is not possible for us to evidence.

Tacitus never says he had any Christian source, never mentions Josephus and does not give the impression of being interested in Jewish statements of belief, and his relationship with Pliny evidences no contact in this matter.

QUALITY

Tacitus can generally be trusted as a historian of what to him was modern history of his day. He was normally a rigorous
historian on events from his own century, even on small details. To give you some idea, he even sees fit to
correct information from his friend Pliny on occasion (see Annals 15.53). There is no basis for saying that
Tacitus has got his facts wrong in this account, if the question should arise. In
fact, the passage is well trusted by secular academics. No-one
holding a classics seat, or a history seat, teaching at an accredited secular university
says that this passage is fake as far as I am aware. If we were to try to say
that all the experts were wrong, we would need a very convincing explanation
for why we thought they were wrong. There is no good reason to overthrow this
academic consensus on this useful passage in Tacitus. The fact that he is a
hostile independent historian makes his treatment of this subject more clearly useful for corroborating what Christians say about their movement having
started in Judea with Christ who died there under Pontius Pilate. This might not seem to add up to very much, but here's a thing: if there were no mention of Christ in Tacitus, sceptics would be quick to jump on this and assert with much alarm and fuss firstly that there ought to be such a mention if Christ existed, and secondly that it follows (as if it did) that the absence of such a mention is a smoking gun telling us that Jesus Christ probably never existed. As it happens there is such a mention, which means that Tacitus cannot be used by sceptics to raise an objection on that basis. PUTTING THE JIGSAW TOGETHER

We can usefully
put Tacitus’ information alongside other independent author, Josephus, who lived in the first century. In material normally accepted by secular
historians as authentic, they tell us this:

A man called John
the Baptist lived in an area under Herod’s jurisdiction (Josephus)

John told Jews to
live good lives and baptised them (Josephus)

Herod feared John
would trigger a revolution, and so he had John arrested and killed (Josephus)

It was in Judea
that people began following Christ, some time before his death. (Tacitus)

Jesus was a teacher
who brought many Jews over to his way of thinking (Josephus)

Some senior Jews
complained to the Roman Governor Pilate about Jesus (Josephus)

Pilate sentenced
Jesus to be crucified (Josephus)

The death penalty
for Jesus given by Pontius Pilate happened during the reign of the Roman
Emperor Tiberius (Tacitus)

The Jesus movement
was only stopped for a moment, and broke out afresh in Judea (Tacitus)

So despite Jesus’
death, his followers carried on regardless for decades on end (Josephus)

In the 60s, James
the brother of Jesus – the Jesus who was called Christ - was stoned to
death, and others too, because some Jewish leaders did not like his
attitude to the Jewish law (Josephus)

By the 60s, Jesus’
followers had also spread to Rome, where some people called them
Chrestians, but really they were named after Christ (Tacitus)

Footnote 1

For those who like to know these things:

the earliest extant use of this Tacitus passage by another writer is by Sulpicius Severus, a contemporary of St Augustine, who lived about 363-425AD, in his Chronicles 2.29.
1-4a

The earliest explicit Christian mention of Nero in particular persecuting Christians (albeit, a different episode) was, like Tacitus, published in the second century, and can be found in the Acts of Paul X.II

It is widely thought by scholars that there is an earlier coded Christian allusion to Nero persecuting Christians in the Book of Revelation chapter
13 where the number 666 is numerologically connected with Nero's name.

Footnote 2

In Greek and Latin, the terms Chrestians and Christians were used almost interchangeably at times in the early centuries by Christians and non-Christians alike. You can read more about this in Eric Scholtens comments which you should scroll down to at https://jayraskin.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/294/There is no room for claiming that this refers to a group of "Chrestians" unconnected with followers of Jesus, not only for the above reason, but also because Tacitus connects them with a Christ who "suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus", and whose followers had reached Rome. Only one known Christ with Christian followers fits the bill. Of particular historical interest is that the term 'Christian' appears here to be attached to the believers in Rome as early as the 60s of the first century. The term did not originate with the Jerusalem believers who first formed the church, and there is no evidence that the Jerusalem church ever called itself by that name. The evidence is that the name was coined in Antioch by outsiders as a nickname for the believers, and that the name had reached as far as Caesarea (Acts
26:28) where it seems to be what Paul was already known by, as far as Roman authorities there were concerned, when Paul was on his journey that would lead him, under arrest, to trial in Rome. This is around 60AD. If any weight is given to this, then it is plausible that the term 'Christian' was in use in Rome by 64AD, where Tacitus (a young contemporary of the events of 64AD) puts it. (Of course, at the time when Tacitus was calling them Christians, his friend Pliny was doing so too.)

Footnote 3

The evidence on Pliny’s side is in Pliny’s correspondence
with Emperor Trajan. To summarise it these were Christians in Pliny’s district
of Bithynia et Pontus (Turkey to you and me) and they included “many persons of every
age, every rank, and also of both sexes” in the cities, villages and farms. The
Christians were not frequenting the Roman temples, and with such impact that the
temples “had been almost deserted”. Some
people were denounced to Pliny as Christians. Those who, under interrogation,
refused to curse Christ, were assumed to be real Christians. Some of these were
executed for refusing to renounce their faith after three opportunities to do
so. Some others were Roman citizens and were therefore transferred to Rome
instead.

The information Pliny obtained from the Christians under
interrogation about their practices was that “they were accustomed to meet on a
fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and
to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft,
or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when
called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to
assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food.” Except they
stopped doing the latter after an official Roman edict forbidding “political
associations”. Two Christian female slaves, called deaconesses, spoke in more
detail, but what they said to Pliny was, to his mind, just “depraved, excessive
superstition", and Pliny does not bother to reveal the content of this. Persecution
by Pliny resulted in many people abandoning the Christian groups and returning
to Roman religious ways.

No need to worry here. The scholarly consensus is that the Tacitus passage is free of interpolation. There are clear reasons for being confident. One is that the style of Latin written by Tacitus is unique and very difficult indeed to imitate successfully. It is difficult to explain this to someone who may not be able to read Latin, but this passage is authentic to Tacitus' personal style. Experts conclude that the Latin text is authentic. Secondly, this cannot be Christian interpolation because the martyr scene lacks the pious touches that Christian writers give to their martyr scenes. See other points above too. Thank you for reading my post.